Carter not in Cuba to free contractor

Former President Jimmy Carter isn’t in Cuba to negotiate for the release of jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross, though he is hoping that his visit will help to thaw U.S.-Cuban relations, he said Tuesday.

Carter told reporters as he toured a convent in Old Havana that he had “spoken to some officials about the case of Mr. Gross,” but indicated that his goal was not to bring the State Department contractor home. “I am not here to take him out of the country,” Carter said, according to Reuters’s translation of his answer, which he gave in Spanish.

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“I hope we will be able to contribute to better relations between the two countries,” Carter said.

Gross, 61, was sentenced earlier this month to 15 years in jail for providing illegal Internet access to Cuban dissidents. Cuban President Raul Castro has accused Gross of spying, but the State Department has said that Gross was in Cuba to set up Internet access for Jewish groups in the island nation and not to do anything else.

Carter is set to meet later Tuesday with Castro and is expected to discuss Gross’s case. Before he leaves on Wednesday, Carter is set to meet with dissident bloggers, including Yoani Sanchez, who writes the influential Generacion Y blog.

The former president last visited Cuba in 2002, and is the only current or former president to do so since the 1959 revolution that brought communist ruler Fidel Castro into power.